Saturday, October 20, 2012

Since i wanted to start creating more abilities and actually use them the way it is intended (through the quick-bar) i had to start making a HUD. I have some Photoshop skills but i lack on the artistic skills to come up with something nice and consistent for my game. But that did not stop me from having a shot at it. So i started on a basic hud, i am fairly pleased with it. I really like the quick-bar boxes and the round health/mana bar. I added a background which is not from me (alienbreed) to check if it is readable on a blue-ish background which my game will have a lot.

So that is what i came up with for now. I decided to leave this for now since it consumed a lot of time and i want to start adding more mechanics to the game.

So now i have to figure out how i want the quick-bar to function. Perhaps right-click to pick a ability or item to put in the slot. Or go with a more common drag and drop system from a ability window or inventory window. To use the ability the player has to choose a target then a left click on the quick-bar or corresponding key stroke (0 - 9) will perform the ability.

Anyway, i just brought my sweet girlfriend home and have the rest of the weekend to work on the game. Hope i do well and perhaps work till Sunday without large breaks or sleep. I want to make some good progress. Please support me by following this blog and tell me what you think. I will consider all the input from people posting comments.

The following video shows you how far the combat mechanics are developed by the time of this post.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Welcome to my spare time game development project TechnoFlux! But before we jump intot the project and game itself let me tell you something about me.

My name is Menno and at the moment of writing i am 32 years old. I have a awesome but humble apartment in Amsterdam where i live since 10 years. Computers always intrigued me, i have been gaming since i was about 8 years old. My very first system was a ZX spectrum that run programs by using a tape recorder and it was awesome. Further along the path i got a Nes and a Snes. But when i finally got a PC around the age of 12 i started to be really into computers. I played games like Civilization, X-com and rogue: Truly awesome games! When the internet came i got heavily into counterstrike, Starcraft and Diablo 2 but soon after that i opened up for all the other possibilities a PC had to offer. Webdesign, 3D design, programming, etc. But it took a couple of years before i really got into it. I have been a hobbyist web designer since 2006, making websites for friends and earning some pocket change.

I never got far with 3D design so since 2010 i picked up programming, and wishing i had done that earlier. First i fiddled around with a couple of different languages and eventually settled with C# and XNA. Which, to my disgust, is probably going to be disbanded soon by Microsoft. I made some simple clones and prototypes to get deeper into the language.

So now it is time to make my own game, Technoflux. This game will be a hybrid rogue like in a SciFi setting. The strength of the game will be the huge amount of options, randomization and customization of your character.

The world

The game will feature a world map that is completely random, including continents where the player is able to travel to. There will be 100's of places to go to and explore where you will be brought to a local map sometimes consisting of several levels.

Quests

There will be a main questline which for this reason can not be that random but i will make it as random as possible. But the aim is to let the player forget the main questline with side quests and even make his own. Making friends and/or enemies opens new quests as well as learning new skills and gaining attributes.

Combat

Combat will be time-unit based. Which is like turns but more versatile. Every action in the game costs time the game "pauses" when a player needs to act and continues when done. Actions have a initial time to perform and a cool-down which makes for a much more dynamic and interesting system then regular turn based games. Depending on where the player is and what he is fighting things can become very strategic.

ToDo

This is what i reveal for now. So what has been done? Well not much but still a lot considering i am just 40 hours in.

-A basic combat system.
It needs to be tweaked a little but pretty much functions as described above. I can easily add new skills and abilities and most can be handled without further work by a very flexible task handling system. Basically i give the ability some info and it generates it using the attributes of the creature. When a creature chooses to use it it get passed to a task handler that rips apart the ability and does what it needs to be doing and calculating all the damage.

-Map generators
I have 2 completely random map generators done they need some tweaking and adjustment but are ready to use. I have a semi random map generator as well which creates maps much like the diablo series do. This one works nice for simple maps but needs a lot more tweaking for some good complicated labyrinths.

Focus

My focus for the next 40 hours will be mostly on the creature classes itself to add more depth to it. I will also be adding much more skills and abilities. And perhaps work a little on the user interface like getting the quick bar to work properly.

Friday, October 5, 2012

The previous couple of days i implemented a part of the HUD and worked more on the abilities. I have added a ability menu that includes all the abilities a player holds. I will filter out the move ability since the player should just use the arrow keys and perhaps i implement a click to move system. Also deciding on the basic attack if the ability should trigger automatically or the player should highlight a ability to use by default. Like a ranged character could use a range ability to trigger when clicking on a enemy and a melee character could have a stronger melee ability selected as a default.

At this moment i am designing a more advanced ability structure/hierarchy. The point of this is to have each skill fall under one or more ability types so i do not have to hard code a resolve for each individual ability. Like a basic melee skill should just fall under weapon damage ability. A elemental attack should fall under elemental damage ability. And a skill that uses a equipped weapon and put elemental damage on it should fall under both. This is so the task handler can pick up on these types and resolve the attack accordingly to the type of ability, like weapon damage should take things into account like weapon damage, armor, etc.

Skills could fall under a lot of these ability types, like a slicing attack, in a area around the player that gives a bleeding over time and does fire damage over time to the enemies it hit. So I am currently figuring out what the best approach would be. I think the best bet is to just set flags for each skill and go over each of the flags in the task handler to see if it is set and resolve it. But with a skill like above i should take into account multiple damage over time flags.

Once this system is in to place and working well i can really take advantage of it and just add a bunch of skills without ever looking at the resolve code. But i have to make sure that each type of skill i want to add is being dealt with.